Escape the Virus

by Ryan Westfield

  Slowly, Matt's accelerated pulse had started to die back down. Slowly, he realized that he felt calmer.

  What were the chances that the men in the street would attack them? Probably not too great.

  After all, what did attacking an occupied house have to offer anyone? Just danger.

  Well, that and supplies. Food. Water. Things that might soon become quite scarce.

  There were too many angles to this whole thing, this whole situation. Too many ways to think about it all. Too many things that could go wrong.

  There were, it seemed, a thousand different ways to die.

  After all, they might already be infected. They might already be dead.

  He needed to just focus on the here and now. Worry about what was in front of him.

  The sun had now set, and the figures in the street quickly became shadows.

  The street lights came on and the shadows became harder to see with less light behind them.

  But Matt found that if he kept his eyes on them, he could still see the figures, shifting here and there, pacing back and forth. Not doing much at all. But they were there. They were still a threat.

  Nearby, Judy and Jamie were talking about what it meant that the social media sites were apparently down.

  To Matt, it meant that things were starting to fall apart.

  The whole system, he thought, would soon come crashing down.

  How much longer would the electricity work for?

  “You two had better get some sleep,” said Matt. “Talking about the internet isn't going to make it come back online.”

  “It's so early though,” said Jamie.

  “Check on Mia before you bed down,” said Matt. “Make sure she hasn't hurt herself.”

  “OK, but I'm not tired though.”

  “I bet you're more tired than you realize. I'm going to be waking you up at about three in the morning. So you'd better get some sleep while you can. This isn't going to work unless we stick to a good schedule.”

  “All right,” grumbled Jamie.

  Matt heard Jamie's and Judy's footsteps as they walked through the house, heading to the basement door, and eventually heading upstairs.

  It got darker and Matt was left to his own thoughts. Silence surrounded him now.

  There was still the distant hum of the city in the distance, but it was so much a part of what he was used to that he barely noticed it.

  The people in the street made no noise, and there wasn't a peep out of Mia in the basement, nor from Damian who was apparently still in the shed. Nor from the man who'd driven away.

  And last but not least, there was, of course, no sound from the corpse on the front stoop.

  Maybe the bloodied corpse would serve as a warning to others who might dare to do the same thing.

  Or maybe it might attract trouble. After all, someone else might think that if someone had died trying to get into the house, then it might be worth the trouble to try themselves. Maybe the dead guy knew something.

  The darkness grew around Matt. He'd told Judy and Jamie not to turn on any lights. He didn't want to attract any more attention than necessary.

  The men in the street had likely already seen the corpse on the front stoop, but hopefully it'd be invisible to anyone else who happened by.

  Matt glanced at his watch occasionally. The minutes turned into hours and the hours ticked by.

  Before he knew it, it was already 10:00 p.m. And nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing.

  He'd glanced down at his phone a couple times, trying to see if the internet would work again. But no luck. Every site seemed down.

  By merely glancing down at his phone, he'd messed up his adaptive night vision.

  So when he looked back at the street through the window, he could no longer see the shadowy figures. They were invisible despite the street lights not so far away.

  But he had to assume that they were still there.

  “Psst, hey, it's just me.” A soft female voice came wafting towards him in the darkness.

  “Jamie?” he said.

  “Yeah. It's me. Didn't want to scare you.”

  “Good call. What's up?”

  “Couldn't sleep.”

  He heard her moving towards him in the darkness.

  He grunted vaguely.

  “Anything going on out here?”

  “Nope,” he said. “And the internet still seems to be down. Hey, while you're up, why don't you try their home computer? Maybe it's just the cell networks that are down.”

  “Already tried it,” said Jamie, speaking like Matt in a low whisper-like voice that seemed appropriate for the darkness. “Judy had a computer upstairs. I got on it. It turned on and everything, and their home router worked, but no sites will load. Which means that the internet service provider isn't working... it's overloaded...”

  “So it could just be a local issue?”

  “I don't know. Given that our cell phones aren't connecting, I'd say it's a larger issue. Probably national.”

  “Shit. That's not good.”

  “No, it's not. Did you try the radio or TV or anything?”

  “Nope,” said Matt. “I've been staring out the window the whole time.”

  “I'll go try them.”

  She let him alone in the darkness, returning less than ten minutes later.

  “Bad news,” she muttered.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, there are no channels coming in on the TV. No stations on the radio.”

  “None at all? You try everything?”

  “Yeah. Everything.”

  “Shit. That's really not good.”

  “What does it mean? How are all the radio stations down?”

  “You didn't even find a single one?”

  “No,” she said. “What does it mean?”

  “I think it means more people are infected than we would have thought.”

  “You mean that everybody who's been working at the stations is now dead from the infection?”

  “Well, either that, or they couldn't get to work. Or the people who somehow kept the stations pumping the signal out into our area... they couldn't get to work. It's not that far-fetched if you consider the video from the convention center... think about how many people are going to be stuck inside there, or stuck in traffic somewhere, or stuck at work...”

  “Or already dead from the virus,” she said, finishing his thought for him.

  “Yeah. Or that. Definitely possible. It seems like the timeline they presented on TV was wrong. At least for some people.”

  “So you think that's what's going on with the internet? The TV?”

  “Probably.”

  “So how are we going to have any clue what's going on? It's seems impossible... we don't have any news of the outside world. Here we are in the middle of a large city and we're completely cut off from the outside world...”

  “I think we already have our news,” said Matt.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fact that none of it works... that there are no TV stations... that's our news right there... it's all we need to know.”

  “Hey,” said Jamie. “Something looks different outside...”

  She had pulled the curtain back where she was and had her face pressed against the glass.

  Matt, who'd been looking towards her direction in the darkness, looked back out the window.

  He immediately spotted what the difference was.

  The street lights had gone out.

  Completely out.

  It was darker than it had been before. Much darker.

  “The street lights are out,” he said.

  “Shit,” she said. “That's what it is, isn't it? It's so dark. I can hardly see anything.”

  “It gets worse.”

  “What? How? You see something else?”

  Matt didn't answer her. Instead, he stood up.

  He had a hunch. But he didn't want to be right.

  He walked across the room, us
ing his flashlight to light up the way.

  His hand found a lamp. Found the switch. Flipped it.

  Nothing.

  Nothing happened.

  “The power's out,” he said.

  “No way,” she said. “Maybe it's just that lamp.”

  “And the street lights?”

  “Let me try one.”

  He heard her getting up, walking across the room.

  He heard the flipping of a switch. One of those switches that are built into the power cord.

  Nothing. No light came on.

  “Shit,” she was muttering. “The power can't be out... it just can't be...”

  “It makes sense, though,” said Matt. “If the radio stations are all dead... if the internet servers are down... if there's no one left to mange those, then who's going to be running the power grid and the power plants?”

  “But it can't be...”

  She cut herself off, and there was a tremendous crashing sound in the darkness.

  Evidently, Jamie had fallen.

  “You OK?” he said.

  “...Yeah,” she said, after a pause.

  Matt found her with his flashlight's beam.

  She'd walked into a table and now lay on the floor.

  “Let me help you up.”

  He reached down and pulled her to her feet. She seemed to be limping a little, and it was a little awkward getting her to her feet.

  “Thanks,” she said, losing her balance a little, her body fell against his body, as if they were hugging.

  It was strange. The last time they'd been that close, they'd been on a date.

  He was about to say something. Maybe make a joke. Try to defuse the tension that seemed to hang in the area.

  But before he could, she screamed.

  A piercing scream.

  “What?” he yelled.

  He swung his flashlight around, turning his head along with it.

  Then he saw it.

  At the window, where the curtain was pulled back, there was a face.

  A human face pressed against the glass. The features were distorted, smushed against the window pane.

  But it wasn't hard to tell who it was.

  It was Damian.

  Damian was holding one of those plastic lanterns that people buy for camping. He was holding it right next to his face.

  His mouth was open. Was it a grin? Was it something else? It was disturbing, whatever the expression was.

  Now he was mouthing something. Mouthing some words that they couldn't hear.

  “He's infected,” came Jamie's words, much softer than her scream.

  It was true.

  Easy to see. Easy to spot.

  Damian's neck was pressed against the glass. One the side, there was a single huge bulging vein. It was unmistakable.

  Suddenly, Damian slammed his closed fist into the window. It made a tremendous noise. The glass shook.

  “What do we do?” said Jamie.

  Matt's hand was already on his gun. He was pulling it from its holster.

  He had his Glock in one hand. Flashlight in the other.

  He kept his flashlight trained on Damian on the other side of the window.

  “Get my mom!” shouted Damian, his words suddenly audible through the glass. Maybe he'd just been moving his mouth before, or maybe he was raising his voice now.

  “What should we do?”

  “Get her!” shouted Jamie, as Damian's fist slammed again and again into the glass.

  There was a good chance that he'd break the glass.

  “Get Judy,” said Matt.

  He didn't take his flashlight off of Damian, and he didn't take his hand off his Glock, which he kept pointed at Damian.

  If Damian got inside, there was a good chance he'd infect everyone.

  If they weren't already infected, that is.

  20

  Damian

  Damian had spent what had felt like an eternity sitting alone in that shed, wondering if he was going to die or not.

  A little light had come in through the dirty window, and he'd used it to frantically check his veins. Both his neck and the back of his hands.

  For a long time, everything had seemed normal. It had seemed as if he hadn't been infected.

  He hadn't had his phone to occupy himself, so his mind was left to wander. And to obsess.

  He obsessed about how unfair it all was. How unjust.

  How could his own mother treat him like that? How could she point a gun at her own flesh and blood?

  She'd given birth to him. She'd brought him into the world. And now she was willing to take him out of it?

  He'd noticed the enlarged veins right before the sun had gone down. He's seen the back of his hands, felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, and realized that he was going to die.

  He visualized the whole thing in graphic detail. He imagined blood erupting from his various orifices. He imagined the pain that he'd feel, and he imagined just what he would look like from another person's perspective.

  And he knew how it would happen. He'd be out there, alone in the yard.

  There was no way they'd let him inside. There'd be no way to hide the fact that he was infected.

  His anger only grew as he thought about it all.

  What a way to end. Out in the cold on his own. At night.

  He'd be dead before morning. He'd already seen the sun for the last time.

  That was it.

  It was all over.

  He'd never been the sort of man who'd thought much about death. His attitude had been avoidant. Now confronted with the reality that this was it, that he'd lived all he was going to live, he was shot through with fear and rage.

  Rage at how unjust his whole life had been.

  Suddenly, his ruminations took on a different tone and he fixated on the countless injustices that had befallen him through his life.

  “It's just not fair,” he found himself muttering alone in the darkness. “They think they're just going to let me die out here... my own mother... my friend... I mean, come on. Is this what I'm really worth to them? My mother's going to let them stay in my house? And me? Out here on my own. Dangerous people all around.”

  That's when he'd decided to leave the shed.

  He didn't bother closing the door behind him. He just left it opened.

  Even to his darkness-adjusted eyes, looking back at the shed was somehow a terrifying sight. The door frame seemed to yawn open to a chasm as dark as anything had ever been.

  He snuck around the side of the house. His footsteps were light.

  “Starting to feel kind of weird,” he muttered to himself. “Yup. Kind of weird. Maybe it's just the worry though. The anxiety of what's to come.”

  He had a battery-powered lantern with him that he'd found in the shed.

  In his other hand, he carried an old rusty shovel. It had a pointed end. It would make a good weapon. If he needed one.

  And he might.

  He held the lantern in front of him as he walked.

  Up ahead, he could see the bloodied corpse on the front stoop.

  The throat was all opened up.

  It was a horrible body. A horrible sight. Lying right there on the steps that he used to play on as a child.

  “What's the world coming to?”

  He glanced at the window.

  No lights on.

  Turning towards the street, the yellowish glow of the streetlights looked pleasant.

  Almost like some bug attracted to light, he found himself walking and shuffling towards the street.

  That body on the steps? That would be him. Soon enough.

  His thoughts were getting jumbled. A little confused.

  Was it hunger? Was it exhaustion? Was it the stress?

  Was it the infection itself?

  Soon enough, he'd be hemorrhaging. Surely, his brain couldn't be working that well.

  He probably already had a fever.

  In fact, was that sweat on his forehead? Bea
ds of sweat? Wasn't his hair too damp, especially for the cool night air?

  There seemed to be some people milling around down on one end of the street, out of the glow of the streetlights. But he couldn't be sure. It seemed that when he looked at them, they just disappeared.

  Why could he only see them out of the corner of his eye?

  Maybe they were just figments of his imagination.

  But were they making noise? Sort of like low murmurs?

  Maybe. He didn't know.

  It spooked him.

  He didn't want to spend his last hours on Earth spooked, so he walked the other direction. Away from them.

  What was he going to do?

  Why was he headed down the street?

  What he really wanted to do was die near his mother. But she wouldn't let him in.

  She wouldn't let him in.

  The words rang through his head.

  “She's not going to let me in,” he found himself saying, over and over again.

  “What's that, friend?” a silky male voice came oozing out of the darkness.

  Damian stopped dead in his tracks.

  But he found that he wasn't scared.

  His heart didn't start racing.

  Adrenaline didn't start pumping.

  After all, what did he have to be scared of? He had already sunk deep down into the depression that came with imminent death. What more could anyone do to him? Take away his last few hours? It didn't matter that much.

  “Who's there?” said Damian, his voice only very vaguely curious.

  “Just a friend.”

  Damian was peering through the darkness, holding his lantern. But he saw no one.

  Then he realized who it was.

  “Oh,” he said, sounding kind of bored. “You're that guy from earlier... the friend of the dead guy.”

  “You caught me.”

  The creaking sound of a car door.

  A couple footsteps in the silence.

  Suddenly, the street lights went off.

  Everything fell into darkness.

  Complete darkness. Except for the battery-powered camping lantern. Which didn't give off much light.

  Silence too. A lot of silence. Maybe more that he'd ever heard. It was as if every piece of machinery for miles and miles was powering down.

  “It's happening,” said the male voice. Still sounded silky. Reminded Damian of a snake.